Winal

The winal is the second unit of the Maya Long Count, equal to twenty kins, or twenty days, the same twenty-day period that structures the months of the Haab. The Long Count reckons time by stacking these units, each larger one a multiple of the last: twenty kins make a winal, and eighteen winals make the next unit up, the tun. That figure of eighteen, rather than twenty, is the single deliberate break in the otherwise base-twenty scheme, chosen so that the tun of 360 days stays close to the solar year. A Long Count date names how many of each unit have elapsed since the mythic starting point. These are the features of the Maya Long Count, the linear calendar the Classic Maya carved on their monuments to anchor events in an unbroken tally of days.

A Winal is twenty Kin, twenty days, the second place in the Long Count. Twenty is the base of Maya vigesimal counting generally, reflecting a finger-and-toe counting system, and the Winal is the one place in the Long Count where that base-20 logic applies without modification; the place above it, the Tun, breaks the pure vigesimal pattern deliberately. Eighteen Winal make one Tun rather than twenty, a substitution epigraphers read as a deliberate accommodation to the solar year: eighteen Winal of twenty days each gives 360 days, a round number close enough to the 365-day solar year that the Tun functions as an approximate year-count for Long Count arithmetic even though the Maya tracked the true 365-day year separately through the Haab. A Long Count date's second-place digit therefore never exceeds seventeen before rolling the Tun place over, exactly as the Kin digit never exceeds nineteen before rolling the Winal place over.

The winal of twenty days is the one unit the Long Count shares directly with the other Maya calendars. The Haab is built of eighteen twenty-day months plus five, the Tzolk'in runs twenty named day signs, and the winal counts twenty kins, so the same period appears as a positional place, as a month and as a naming cycle in three different systems.

Twenty is not an arbitrary choice. Mesoamerican counting is vigesimal, built on twenty rather than ten, and the same base governs the number words of Mayan languages, the bar-and-dot numerals in which one bar is five and one dot is one, and the structure of the Long Count above the winal. The usual explanation, that twenty is the count of fingers and toes, is old and widely repeated, though it is an inference from the base rather than anything the sources state.

The winal is also where the Long Count's single irregularity sits, one place above. Eighteen winals rather than twenty make a tun, which brings that unit to 360 days and near the solar year. Every other step in the count multiplies by twenty exactly.

One consequence of the vigesimal base deserves stating. Maya numerals are positional and include a sign for zero, which appears in the Long Count wherever a place is empty, and positional notation with a zero is rare in the ancient world. The Long Count is the context in which Maya zero is most often met, and the winal place is where a reader first encounters it, since a date such as 9.12.0.0.0 has zeros in the tun, winal and kin places at once.